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John Baconthorpe on Soul, Body and Extension Simon F. Nolan

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John Baconthorpe on Soul, Body and Extension Simon F. Nolan John Baconthorpe on Soul, Body and Extension Simon F. Nolan ABSTRACT: John Baconthorpe (c.1290-1345/8) was the best-known of the Carmelite scholastics in the Middle Ages. This article is a brief study of his solution to the philosophical problem of how the soul may be wholly present in the human body and present whole and undivided in each part. Baconthorpe’s account is of great interest for a number of reasons. He takes issue with one of his fellow Carmelite masters, alerting us to diversity of opinion within that ‘school’. Furthermore, in using terminology and illustrative analogies drawn from terminist logic and the mathematical sciences, Baconthorpe is an important witness to what has been described as the ‘mathematization’ of philosophy and theology in late medieval England. Finally, study of Baconthorpe’s texts provides further evidence of the emergence of the theme of extension in fourteenth-century thought in which we can discern the roots of modern philosophical debate. Introduction In Plato’s Phaedrus Socrates declares: ‘to describe what the soul actually is would require a long account, altogether a task for a god in every way.’100 Unperturbed, many thinkers over the ages have attempted this ‘god-like’ task of giving a philosophical account of the soul and, more particularly, its relationship to the body. In the late Middle Ages much of the philosophical discussion concerning the relationship between the soul and the body concerned itself with three problems. First, there was the interaction problem: how do soul and body interact with one another in a causal way given they are such different substances? Secondly, there was the unification problem: how could soul and body, such apparently separate and diverse substances, be united under the identity of a unique and unified entity such as, for example, a human being? Thirdly, there was the extension problem: how could the soul, as the form of the body, be present as a whole in every part of the body without being subject to spatial extension? In the early fourteenth-century thinkers placed particular emphasis on the extension problem and considered it within the context of a wider concern to articulate a metaphysics of presence. The challenge to Eucharistic theology to give an account of the natural extension of Christ’s body which is manifestly not circumscribed in the Sacrament was seen to be analogous to the difficulty of explaining how the soul is present in the body in a dynamic way without itself being spatially extended.101 100 Plato, Phaedrus 246a, transl A. Nehamas and P. Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997) p. 524. 101 See P.J.J.M. Bakker, La raison et le miracle: les doctrines eucharistiques (c.1250-c.1400). Contribution à l’étude des rapports entre philosophie et théologie (Nijmegen: Katholieke 33 For many late medieval thinkers the key to dealing with such problems of presence and extension was to posit a forma corporeitatis or ‘corporeal form’ in addition to the rational soul and thereby insist upon a plurality of substantial form in the human being. Some kind of form of the body or of ‘bodiliness’ was considered necessary to underscore the theological doctrines of the resurrection and the cult of relics; the issue was that of asserting the numerical identity of the human body through life, death and resurrection. In time to assert the contrary position and to insist (along with a thinker such as Thomas Aquinas (d.1274)) on the unicity of substantial form was to incur official censure. Although a condemnation of the unicity theory is absent from the Parisian condemnation of 1277, Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham’s 1286 condemnation explicitly targeted it.102 The subject of this article, the Carmelite John Baconthorpe, conforms to the plurality thesis in relation to substantial form. There is nothing remarkable about this but what is interesting is the way in which he sees the potential in the plurality thesis for extricating the rational soul from issues of spatial extension. Equally intriguing are the kind of analogies Baconthorpe employs in his attempt to solve the extension problem by explaining the way in which the rational soul may be wholly present as form of the body and present as a whole in every part of the human being. Study of John Baconthorpe on soul, body and extension is important for a number of reasons. First, paying attention to early Carmelite scholastics such as Baconthorpe is an indispensible part of the current move among scholars of medieval philosophy to deepen our understanding of the intellectual history of the early fourteenth-century, thus moving away from the ‘Gilsonian paradigm’ of thirteenth- century superiority. Secondly, reading Baconthorpe on the relationship between body and soul provides us with an example of early dispute among Carmelite doctors: Baconthorpe takes issue with the views of Gerard of Bologna, first Carmelite doctor at the University of Paris and former Prior General of the Order, who advocated the unicity of substantial form in human beings. Thirdly, Baconthorpe is an important witness to a discernible change in philosophical terminology which takes place at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Philosophical discussions of the period become replete with ‘extension-type’ language. Previously there was ample discussion concerning quantity, the subject of quantity, quantity’s role in individuation and the relationship between whole and parts. The fourteenth-century focus in thought and in terminology on issues of extension helps to build up a picture of very real continuity of discussion in medieval, Renaissance and modern thought.103 Fourthly, reading Baconthorpe’s discussion of soul body and extension is a contribution to the Universiteit, 1999). Also K. Plotnik, Hervaeus Natalis OP and the Controversies over the Real Presence and Transubstantiation (Munich-Paderborn-Vienna: F. Schönigh Verlag, 1970). 102 For a discussion of the philosophical and theological controversy surrounding the unicity- plurality of substantial form see Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York-Chichester: Columbia University Press, 1995). 103 See D. Des Chene, Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 2000), especially Chapter 9 ‘Divisible Souls’, pp. 171-189, for a survey of discussion of soul, body and extension among Renaissance thinkers. With an eye to continuity of the debate into later centuries Des Chene highlights (p. 171, n. 2) the later exasperation of Pierre Gassendi when faced with (what Gassendi regarded as) Descartes’s dogmatism in asserting that mind must not be extended without much supporting argument. 34 wider medieval preoccupation with the metaphysics of presence. Fifthly, Baconthorpe’s style of argumentation, employing as it does terminology and illustrative examples from ‘the exact sciences’ (such as geometry) gives us some insight into the way English theologians liked to do their theology with their strong background in the mathematical sciences. In short, Baconthorpe is an important witness to what William Courtenay has described as the ‘mathematisation of theology’ in England in the late medieval period; it will be noted later in this article that the terminology the Carmelite master employs shows a certain affinity with that of the Oxford Mertonists.104 Finally, reading Baconthorpe helps us to trace the impact of the Condemnations of 1277 and 1286 on the subsequent development of thought. After a brief presentation of the life and work of Baconthorpe, some consideration will be given to the position of Gerard of Bologna since Baconthorpe articulates his own views in reaction to those of his Carmelite confrere. Then Baconthorpe’s solution to the problem of soul, body and extension will be presented and followed by some concluding remarks. 1. John Baconthorpe The best-known of the early Carmelite scholastics, John Baconthorpe, was born in England around 1290.105 In the past scholars have suggested that he read the Sentences 104 W.J. Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-century England (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 258-262. Edward Grant points to the profound differences between English universities and the university of Paris in relation to the study of the exact sciences in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: ‘The emphasis on the exact sciences was not, however, of equal breadth and scope in all medieval universities. Although they formed an integral part of the curriculum at Oxford from the thirteenth century onward, they received much less emphasis at Paris and other places. For example, mathematics was not regularly taught at Paris in the thirteenth century and only sporadically in the fourteenth.’ (E. Grant, The Nature of Natural Philosophy in the Late Middle Ages (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), p. 20). Elsbieta Jung highlights the ‘new theology’ which emerged in England as result of the engagement with the exact sciences on the part of theologians: ‘There were three main disciplines in which Englishmen were the leaders: terminist logic, mathematical physics and a new theology based on methods and insights achieved in the first two areas.’ (E. Jung, ‘The Concept of Time in Richard Kilvington’ in G.Alliney and L. Cova, eds., La concettualizzazione del tempo nel pensiero tardomedievale. Atti de Colloquio internazionale (Trieste, 4-6 marzo 1999) (Firenze: Olshki, 2000), pp. 187-205, p. 187). John Baconthorpe can be seen to be a proponent of this innovative approach among English scholars. 105 For studies of John Baconthorpe, Doctor resolutus, see the following: S. Nolan, ‘John Baconthorpe’ in H. Lagerlund, ed., Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 594-597; R. Cross, ‘John Baconthorpe’, in Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone, eds., A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, (Malden MA-Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp.
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